Bangor boys win duel with Brewer

ORONO – Bangor’s hopes came down to a freshman and senior in Class A’s Eastern Maine team tennis championship Thursday at the University of Maine. Bangor won the title 3-2.

Brewer’s Andy Moreau and Sean Murphy won the first set 6-3 of the first doubles match, but Bangor’s Mark Guyer and Lance Lavoie strung them out before nabbing the second set in a tiebreaker, 7-6 (7-3).

And while rookie Lavoie was calm and cool, Guyer was playing with a little more emotion than coach Cathy Gordon really hoped for in a life and death first doubles match.

“We had quite a talk after that second set,” said Gordon after Lavoie and Guyer pulled out the third set 6-4. “I just told them to remember that they had won that second set and they had to keep the momentum going and boy did they ever.”

Guyer had alternated throughout the match between popping his racket off his head and high-fiving with the smaller Lavoie.

“I think we knew we were going to win, I don’t know how many breaks we had in the first set, but we were up a lot in the second set, so I figured we had earned it,” Lavoie said. “After we won that set, Kenny (Allen) was telling us that they were going to be nuts after we came back.”

“We knew we had to win the match for ourselves and the team,” said a collected Guyer later.

On the girls side, Caribou’s Chelsea Belanger took it into a hard-fought third set before disposing of no. 1-seeded Gardiner’s hopes for the title, 3-2.

Playing in the midst of a 2-2 tie, Belanger stayed cool as she battled back from a 6-1 second set loss to Kim Palmer, before beating her 6-4 in third, extending her school’s Eastern Maine championship streak to four.

In the Class B matchups, Camden-Rockport swept the titles from the Maine Central Institute boys from Pittsfield, 4-1, and Mount Desert Island girls, 3-2.

Down 2-1, Coach Michael Grey’s second doubles team of Emily Olds and Abbie Leonard survived three sets and a tiebreaker to pull the Windjammers even with MDI.

“That was an incredible match. They were up 5-4, then (MDI) came back, tied it up 5-5, then (MDI) went ahead 6-5, then we tied up and smoked a tiebreaker 7-2,” said Grey. “They wanted to win it. The last two matches came down to them. What more can you ask of them?”

That left the match on the strings of junior Johanna Babb who was in the midst of a war with MDI’s top singles player, Jill Pelletier.

Babb managed to finish off Pelletier in three sets, giving Grey his first Eastern Maine coaching title at Camden-Rockport.

In the boys match, Camden-Rockport handily beat MCI in their third match of the season.

“The first time we beat them 4-1, and then the second time we beat them 3-2. We got in a little bit of trouble in the 3-2 match because we were up,” said C-R boys coach John Lippman. “I was thinking a little bit can we beat a team three times in a row, ’cause you hear a lot about that stuff.”

Brent Boynton and Adam Theriault eased Lippman’s mind early, giving his boys their sixth Eastern Maine title.

Class C saw its share of routs as the Penobscot Valley girls of Howland and Calais boys won easily. The PVHS girls defeated Sumner 4-1. The Calais boys beat Van Buren 5-0.

Only Cassady Casey of Sumner rained on the Howlers’ parade as she defeated their top singles player, Jessica Potter, in a match for pride. Potter beat Casey 6-4 in the first set before the Sumner girl came back to win the second and third sets.

The Calais boys controlled that match.

“These kids play 1 1/2 to two hours of practice, and then they go out and play under the lights for another two hours,” said Calais coach Peter Leon. “They just are a committed bunch of kids. They give you their whole hearts.”